I've talked about how games having rules to structure play fell out of fashion, and how a gameplay loop that consists of “referee makes things up – players respond – referee calls for rolls, then makes more up” emerged – often with a map or a timeline to aid the ref in framing scenes, but without clear mechanical procedures to determine what happens next.
And this has always seemed to me an exhausting treadmill. To see it as a treadmill is the other side of the coin to “railroading” – the referee tries to reduce the burden by planning out events in advance or buying a published module, those events are wasted if the players take their preferred path; either way, resentment ensues.
FRP has always been on a path of escalating commercialisation. What began as a collaborative hobby project arising spontaneously from midwestern wargaming clubs in the late 60s and 70s has become more slick and heavily marketed and less DIY and ad hoc with every iteration.
It is perhaps as an exception to this trend that the OSR was most interesting.
In my previous post I talked about nested loops giving structure to the game, creating a series of interrelated contexts within which the players' decisions have meaning and consequences.
We can contrast structural mechanics with resolution mechanics. With resolution mechanics you have a specific, immediate question raised by the story and actions of the PCs (“can I pick this lock?”, “can Superman arm-wrestle The Hulk?”, “should the story go the way Jack thinks it should go, or the way Jill wants to see it unfold?”) and you turn to dice and numbers and formal procedures to give you an answer.
Structural mechanics are more pro-active. They tell you what to do next. They establish certain facts about the world. Random encounter checks, downtimes, and reaction rolls are all structural. They raise questions, and mostly resolve only the questions they introduced.
Over the past two years I've been running the most successful FRP campaign I've ever been lucky enough to be a part of, and I want to think about why. Why were previous games so unsatisfying? What makes this one so good?
Critiquing FRP design is difficult, because existing as it does at the intersection of formal contest and make-believe, our natural ability to tell stories and have fun imagining things with our friends tends to compensate for deficiencies in the rules. And indeed, much of what makes my campaign work is the players, a mix of enthusiastic D&D neophytes and helpful, responsible old hands.
But I think one of the most useful things has been that the OSR style gives structure to the game in the form of nested gameplay loops. The combat round is a loop; the combat itself is a loop; dungeon turns are loops; each expedition into a dungeon, hexmap or pointcrawl is a loop; repeatedly returning to down to level up and build institutions and relationships is a loop.
The smallest loops tell you whether you've been stabbed by a goblin; their results feed into bigger loops, like whether you survived the fight, how much treasure you bring home, until the biggest loops tell you how you made your mark on the world.
When I consider the question of why we play RPGs – and why moreover they have maintained such a hold upon my imagination throughout the years – my thoughts inevitably return to childhood. Learning to read was a wonder – a skill which, once learned, unlocked narratives from pages of symbols and allowed them to unfold in the mind's eye. I think we forget, from daily use, just how wonderful it is.
